My grandfather, Oliver Emmerich, was one of the greatest Mississippi editorial writers of the 20th century. The top editorial award in the state is named after him. Over five decades, he wrote thousands upon thousands of editorials and influenced our state.
From time to time, I go back and read some of his editorials. I am amazed at Oliver’s insights and how relevant his writing is 70 years later. I reprint one of them, which he titled “Quality of Unequality Must Go Ahead of Conformity.”
What America needs today is to develop the quality of inequality.
Automobiles are within the reach of ownership of millions of Americans today because Henry Ford was not the equal of other men.
Had Thomas Edison not possessed the quality of inequality, people might still be reading by the light of coal oil lamps. His inequality led him to the discovery of the incandescent lamp.
It was the inequality of Gen. George Washington that gave victory to the American colonies over George III.
Because Thomas Jefferson was not the equal of his neighbors, the American people were given a Bill of Rights.
Equality in the sense that it is sometimes interpreted in the realm of politics is synonymous with conformity.
We have advanced this idea editorially before. We repeat it for emphasis and because we recognize that our people are progressively getting deeper into the concept that all men are equal.
Conformity is a totalitarian pattern. With the freedom to create as provided to our people under the Constitution men cannot be equal because their creations must vary in accordance with their respective qualities of patience, courage, intelligence, determination, imagination, and self-discipline.
Abraham Lincoln wisely said that you cannot make the poor richer by making the rich poorer.
Notwithstanding this truth the theory is repeatedly advanced that the American people should be equal in all things and that it is their right to be equal.
Of course, men should be equal under the law. Equal justice must be given to all men. And we should strive to provide equal opportunity to all. The concept which upholds the dignity of the individual must be inviolate if America is to continue to be America.
There are impractical and starry-eyed visionaries in our country today who, in the name of equality, would level our people to the plateau of the individual with the lowest intelligence quotient.
Conformity is a dangerous pattern. Conformity means leveling down, not leveling up. Conformity means a robot type existence as colorless and lifeless as the mounds in a graveyard.
JESUS CHRIST did not regard all men as being equal. The parable of the talents is an endorsement of the quality of inequality.
The term “quality of inequality” is correctly used. We can recognize its value when we explore the realms of science, art, philosophy, literature or any field. Inequality is in itself a quality. Shakespeare possessed it. Huxley and Leonard da Vinci possessed it. And because each possessed it the world was made richer.
What America needs is a re-awakening of the spirit of renewed competition, not succumb to the will to destroy it.
When men with the quality of inequality explore, discover, invent, execute, direct, the standard of living of all people is lifted.
People who condemn inequality rather than extoll success for the good it brings to many contribute to the enlargement of prejudice. Surely, we should not be prejudiced against this quality of inequality.
Inequality must be faced by both the humble and the great. What scientist can say, ''My record is equal to that of the late Albert Einstein?" And what contemporary philosopher can say, "I have climbed to the selfless heights not climbed by Albert Sweitzer?"
Under the U.S. Constitution all men have equal right to justice, to education, to freedom. But it does not discourage the quality of inequality. The freedom to create opens up broad vistas of achievements. It is conformity, not freedom, which seeks to make all men equal.
The growing will for conformity and the fallacious concept that all men are equal outside the law, accompanied by the attempt of some forces within the government to prove it, could lead to the downfall of our nation.
Herbert Hoover expressed this idea in these words:
"We believe in equal opportunity for all, but we know this includes the opportunity to rise to leadership, to be uncommon. The great human advances have not been brought about by mediocre men and women."
Our constitution gives to each citizen the freedom to create. And as we use this constitutional freedom to create, we develop the quality of inequality, a quality which was important in the establishment of the United States of America.
